IMHO, Trump is toast as a president. I can't see how articles of impeachment aren't issued if he did in fact tell Comey to drop the Flynn investigation.

But...even if he survives this current crisis, I can't see how he gets anything meaningful done. No one will trust him or want to work with him. We will have a lame duck president for the next 3 years.

So, time to move on. He likely can't do anything for the country...conservatives or liberals (if he was actually going to do something meaningful). If Trump is allowed to hobble on for the next 3ish years, we'll have nothing but crisis after crisis. He will get crushed in 2020 as an incumbent and it will a generation before another conservative gets in the Oval Office.

Pence however could stop this from happening. He might not be great, but he will be a calming, stabilizing force that this country desperately needs because he's not insane. He'll at least try to work with democrats to get things done. And he won't drag conservative values through the mud like Trump has.

The best way forward is to await actual evidence, await actual proof/conviction of anything and more. All that exists now are news stories and fiction based on nothing. The entire Russia tie is laughable and the Comey thing is just an attempt to try and rally the dems base and rattle cages of republicans in office.

If lawmakers on both sides worked this hard on anything else, they might actually accomplish something and earn their pay.

The best way forward is to await actual evidence, await actual proof/conviction of anything and more. All that exists now are news stories and fiction based on nothing. The entire Russia tie is laughable and the Comey thing is just an attempt to try and rally the dems base and rattle cages of republicans in office.

If lawmakers on both sides worked this hard on anything else, they might actually accomplish something and earn their pay.

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I agree the Russia links with Trump are nonsense (Manafort, on the other hand, has been working for slime balls all over the world for years).

Yet, Trump has clearly angered the deep state mechanisms in the country. We've seen what happens to Presidents that do that....so impeachment/resigning is probably the best thing that could happen to Trump at this point.

As for Pence, he disturbs me like no other. He's like Cheney but a theocrat to boot.

let him. these people who operate on emotion and fear need to be called-out and kicked out. a huge part of the "swamp" are law makers and members of the current and past administration who are causing these issues. They are not helping move the country a forward and need to be left to go find happiness elsewhere. The IC is NOT another branch of gov't like they enjoy thinking they are. Time to end that BS. I don't care if that angers them or not. Time for them to know their place.

let him. these people who operate on emotion and fear need to be called-out and kicked out. a huge part of the "swamp" are law makers and members of the current and past administration who are causing these issues. They are not helping move the country a forward and need to be left to go find happiness elsewhere. The IC is NOT another branch of gov't like they enjoy thinking they are. Time to end that BS. I don't care if that angers them or not. Time for them to know their place.

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They've killed one president already. Trump is not a principled man, let alone one principled enough to risk his life in dismantling the government-within-a-government that Truman warned us about after JFK's death.

They've killed one president already. Trump is not a principled man, let alone one principled enough to risk his life in dismantling the government-within-a-government that Truman warned us about after JFK's death.

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sounds like it's time to kill back aka a revolution. many believe we're headed in that direction.

I say yes. "They" are not going to let him lead this country. The Republicans will accomplish nothing as long as he is President. I hate to say it, but "they" have just about won.
They = Democrats, establishment Republicans, media, intelligence community, Deep State, and more I'm sure I've missed.
To borrow a phrase from Nixon, Trump has given out a lot of swords and there are plenty of people/groups ready to stick it in.

IMHO, Trump is toast as a president. I can't see how articles of impeachment aren't issued if he did in fact tell Comey to drop the Flynn investigation.

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I agree with pretty much everything you wrote. And, as comes as no surprise, I roundly loathe Donald Trump as President. He has already done great harm to the country. It seems likely he will continue to do great harm in the future. And I have very good reasons to doubt his ability to handle any form of crisis.

That said: I think it would be a grave mistake for Congress, or the Cabinet, to take steps to impeach or otherwise remove Donald Trump from Office.

While doing so may very well save the United States from all sorts of misfortunes and missed opportunities over the next three and a half years, it will come at a very grave cost. Not the least of which is that deposing an elected Head of State, even in the most legal manner, is something that stable democracies do not do. That is why we have Elections, and why we have strict limits on the terms of office. Removing Trump would set a dangerous precedent for any future President, of either party, to be deposed because he did something unpopular, or made some series of mistakes.

Removing Trump from office would also risk civil insurrection or other political discord on the part of Trump's millions of supporters. Trump was, by all accounts, legally elected. By what right do we seek to undo the legal process whereby Trump took office? I would not want those millions of people to say that our political establishment overturned the will of the people.

Trump is not clinically insane. Trump is not physically disabled, stricken by a stroke, or otherwise unable to perform the duties of his Office.

And unless, and until a truly watertight case can be made that Trump's actions rise to an indisputable level of "high crimes" against the United States - then this country will have to live with him as President.

Millions of people made, IMHO, a tragic mistake voting Trump into Office. They need to learn to live with the consequences of that mistake, lest they be tempted to make a similar one in the future.

The best way forward is to await actual evidence, await actual proof/conviction of anything and more. All that exists now are news stories and fiction based on nothing. The entire Russia tie is laughable and the Comey thing is just an attempt to try and rally the dems base and rattle cages of republicans in office.

If lawmakers on both sides worked this hard on anything else, they might actually accomplish something and earn their pay.

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For me, I'm thinking that the Russia thing will amount to a whole bunch of nothing. The problem is what Comey is claiming. It's obstruction of justice if it is true and he will have to be impeached.

Even if it isn't true, the damage is done. We're five months in and this administration has spent most of that time putting out fires. It's only going to get worse from here.

Put in Pence, sweep Bannon, Spicer, Kushner, etc out the door and we get the conservative presidency that the electorate (I guess?) was voting for.

The problem is what Comey is claiming. It's obstruction of justice if it is true and he will have to be impeached..

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I don't see what he said as obstructing. No more than Comey himself letting Hit liar y off the hook when she was clearly even in his own words guilty of breaking the law. Did he obstruct justice by playing the role of AG? By letting her slip by even though she broke the law? If Trump indeed did obstruct an investigation, did Comey take the memo to the proper authorities back in Feb after it occurred? Is a written memo by him proof anything actually occurred or is it just his word against Trumps?

I agree with pretty much everything you wrote. And, as comes as no surprise, I roundly loathe Donald Trump as President. He has already done great harm to the country. It seems likely he will continue to do great harm in the future. And I have very good reasons to doubt his ability to handle any form of crisis.

That said: I think it would be a grave mistake for Congress, or the Cabinet, to take steps to impeach or otherwise remove Donald Trump from Office.

While doing so may very well save the United States from all sorts of misfortunes and missed opportunities over the next three and a half years, it will come at a very grave cost. Not the least of which is that deposing an elected Head of State, even in the most legal manner, is something that stable democracies do not do. That is why we have Elections, and why we have strict limits on the terms of office. Removing Trump would set a dangerous precedent for any future President, of either party, to be deposed because he did something unpopular, or made some series of mistakes.

Removing Trump from office would also risk civil insurrection or other political discord on the part of Trump's millions of supporters. Trump was, by all accounts, legally elected. By what right do we seek to undo the legal process whereby Trump took office? I would not want those millions of people to say that our political establishment overturned the will of the people.

Trump is not clinically insane. Trump is not physically disabled, stricken by a stroke, or otherwise unable to perform the duties of his Office.

And unless, and until a truly watertight case can be made that Trump's actions rise to an indisputable level of "high crimes" against the United States - then this country will have to live with him as President.

Millions of people made, IMHO, a tragic mistake voting Trump into Office. They need to learn to live with the consequences of that mistake, lest they be tempted to make a similar one in the future.

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I don't think it will be that bad. The closest analogy we have is Nixon. He wasn't impeached but he was effectively forced to resign. When he was elected, his approval ratings were actually pretty high. His ratings plummeted to around were Trump is now and I'm not aware of any serious opposition to him leaving office.

EDIT: I don't really understand the general motivations of the hardcore MAGA crowd. But I suspect that a lot of people who voted for Trump did so not because they wanted Trump, but because they wanted a conservative cabinet, appointees and judges.

And let's be honest. Can we really call Trump's presidency the "will of the people" when he didn't win the popular vote? His presidency is as much a result of a legal/political process as his potential removal would be.

As for Pence, he disturbs me like no other. He's like Cheney but a theocrat to boot.

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Yeah most days I'd almost rather take my chances with Trump. Especially because looking farther down the chain I'm no fan of Ryan either. The theocracy part there would be less of an issue but the court picks would be indistinguishable. There's still the chance Trump's legislative inclinations may be somewhat less to the right than at least what the far right of the GOP wants. It's not clear if Trump figures he's even-up on his campaign promise to pick a conservative for the court either, so any further pick might be less overtly conservative if no less pro business. With Pence, not so. With Ryan, hard to say, possibly not so hard right.

On the other hand Trump is so reckless, feckless, preoccupied, obssessive, and a complete loose cannon when someone has pushed one of his zillion buttons, that it's hard to value a maybe-less-far-right Donald Trump over a maybe-completely-bonkers Donald Trump. The thing with the intel share is just Trump in a nutshell. The recipients, the timing, the narcissistic grandeur of dispensing special things to favored supplicants, the in your faceness of violating protocols without quite breaking any laws. I'd add "and feeding once again the blind craziness of people who think this is exactly what they hired Trump to do" but I don't want to go out of my way to offend anyone before lunchtime on a Wednesday. From here on out the rest of the week, no guarantees.

Anyway after one of Trump's outré moves, I start thinking I prefer at least Mike Pence for his prior executive experience, apparent unflappability and Ryan for a once more prominent (and possibly revivable) sense of the importance of our social fabric as essential to a sturdy nation.

Ryan has kept shifting right as the far right gained power in Congress. The backfiring on how ordinary Republican voters view ultraconservative agendas has not come to full flower yet, but some eyes were opened as the GOP unveiled their draconian health care proposal. Ryan has some thinking to do -- along the lines of "how did I get here, exactly?"-- and he's probably doing it, but it's not going to surface publicly any time soon, I imagine.

So I slide back to withholding "final final" thoughts about whether I'd like to see Trump gone from the Oval Office. For today, I say no.

And so I'm impatient with the media doing stuff like eliding the "wish" part of what Trump wrote when they cite Trump as wanting Comey to quit investigating Flynn. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. In the meantime wishing is just short of applying too much pressure on a prosecutor. Surely the fricken New York Times, et alia understand this.​

Trump may be burying himself but there's no way to make his supporters desert him through selective editing of things Trump says or writes. Let the record be the record, the pattern becomes apparent and carries its own weight after awhile; one could ask the 1973 House Judiciary Committee or the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities aka the Senate Watergate Committee about that. It wasn't one thing that brought Republican representatives and senators to tell Nixon he had lost support. It was the drip, drip, drip of one more thing and the dawning prospect that there was more, more more on tap.

In the meantime, in office, Trump is proving a true hazard to a functional American government, but he's also slowly turning into the devil his aides know, the devil Congressional leaders know, the gaslighting devil we not only know but have to turn away from his twitter storms once in awhile just to clear the mind. To the media he's the devil that sells a lot of papers. So hey, it's all good... ?!

I'm glad I'm not McConnell or Ryan though. If they misjudge when to pull the plug on this guy there will be a hell of a tab for the GOP to try to slather over with campaign talking points. It might be impossible, but then the Democrats are good at shooting themselves in the foot too. They already have Perez out there saying on TV (after Clinton popped up to found an umbrella organization she has ostensibly created to help fund some progressive groups) that hey if Clinton wants to run again it's up to her.

Honestly the GOP's not even half dead, if that's how Perez plans to speak for the "new" DNC.

Bottom line it's really hard to tell some days which side of the establishment in politics has less of a handle on how to get Americans back in the bag of letting K street run business as usual.

History repeats itself, just gets the details wrong. Let's see how 2018 goes and then maybe the landscape for 2020 will lift out of this fog we're still in from having to choose between a couple of people both ill suited to wrest our self-government back out of the hands of the oligarchs and kleptocrats.

I would wager 80% of the GOP in the house and senate didn't want Trump in the first place, kicking his ass to the curb should be that difficult.

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Trump didn't want the job either. All of the Trump apologists are too stupid to realize this. Meanwhile, Trump is basically doing everything he can to get impeached so he can get out of the job. But no, his stupid apologists will come out and justify anything he does.

I don't think it will be that bad. The closest analogy we have is Nixon. He wasn't impeached but he was effectively forced to resign. When he was elected, his approval ratings were actually pretty high. His ratings plummeted to around were Trump is now and I'm not aware of any serious opposition to him leaving office.

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Nixon wasn't really much of a populist, so his actual performance in office was a significant element of his support. And the fact that he himself resigned, rather than go through an actual impeachment, significantly smoothed over the transition of power (as did Ford's pardon). Supporters of Nixon across the country couldn't really do much after that set of events.

Trump, on the other hand, has only recently been elected to office, and did so with the intent to shake up government (aka "drain the swamp"). The idea that he would be impeached by those already entrenched in government should only serve to increase his support among his base of voters, not decrease it.

And let's be honest. Can we really call Trump's presidency the "will of the people" when he didn't win the popular vote?

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Yes. Yes we can. Trump may not enjoy a majority of the popular vote, but he does have a large, committed, and vociferous base that he can count on. Unless these people are somehow persuaded otherwise, they will surely continue to back their man throughout the impeachment process.

I have long since copped to nostalgia for his father... and the son would look better by the day if I didn't remember pretty vividly some other characters from that administration. In both cases I acknowledge a selective memory. I want it to be better than it was, them to be better than they were. Surely I must have been better too? Oh, wait. I am perfect right now, I forgot.

sounds like it's time to kill back aka a revolution. many believe we're headed in that direction.

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I understand that you are talking about people predicting such an event, but my worry is that some fools would welcome it. One only has to look at Syria or any other country suffering such a calamity to understand what it means.

I don't see what he said as obstructing. No more than Comey himself letting Hit liar y off the hook when she was clearly even in his own words guilty of breaking the law. Did he obstruct justice by playing the role of AG? By letting her slip by even though she broke the law? If Trump indeed did obstruct an investigation, did Comey take the memo to the proper authorities back in Feb after it occurred? Is a written memo by him proof anything actually occurred or is it just his word against Trumps?

This story too is just a story IMO. It's not going to go anywhere.

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Law enforcement always uses its discretion when choosing what situations warrant charges. He probably should have brought charges against Clinton but his choice not to was not obstruction of justice.

It's not the president's place to tell the FBI director which investigations he should and should not be carrying out.

Not the least of which is that deposing an elected Head of State, even in the most legal manner, is something that stable democracies do not do. That is why we have Elections, and why we have strict limits on the terms of office. Removing Trump would set a dangerous precedent for any future President, of either party, to be deposed because he did something unpopular, or made some series of mistakes.

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My understanding is that all democracies have impeachment clauses in their constitutions, and many have had to do it at some point. In the US the procedure is outlined in Article One of the Constitution. It's a cornerstone of our country. And it's not easy to accomplish. For it to get that far, a lot of people would have to be on the same page, and it couldn't just be because of unpopular decisions or mistakes.

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